Medlab Clinical Limited IPO and ASX listing

Our Role

We advised Medlab Clinical Limited, a nutritional pharmaceutical company, on its IPO and listing on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) with market capitalisation of AUD32.16 million. The prospectus was filed in April 2015, with listing on the ASX on 14 July 2015.

Sparke Helmore was the Australian legal advisor for the newly-listed Medlab Clinical Limited. Our role included advising on the IPO and admission requirements, including establishing and managing the due diligence process and due diligence committee, advising on and contributing to the drafting of the prospectus, and managing and advising on regulatory compliance by Medlab Clinical Limited for the IPO.

The deal was made more difficult by the insolvency of the lead manager, BBY Limited, needing to address this delay, getting approval of a replacement broker, and addressing and navigating the resulting regulatory and commercial hurdles.

Background

Medlab is an early phase drug development company, specialising in biologics targeting illness, disease states and syndromes in areas such as chronic kidney disease, obesity, depression, pain management and anti-aging/muscular-skeletal health. It is headquartered in Sydney, Australia, with sales and marketing offices in Australia and the United States. Medlab's business plan involves the generation of revenue in the short-term from the sale of nutraceuticals. This will help fund development of a medium-term revenue stream from successful clinical development of its research, known as pharmaco-biotics (or probiotics). The current global market for probiotics is estimated at US $30 billion and is expected to grow to US $45 billion by 2018.